Softbank with big guns 😎
Bad loans problems, Bezos in space, and new IT era.
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Market summary: 📊
Back to back soft sessions in India, worsened by weak financial services earnings. US had a quick bounce as inflation worries wither away.
US:
S&P 500 - up 1.52%
Nasdaq - up 1.23%
India:
Nifty 50 - down 0.76%
Sensex - down 0.68%
What’s brewing hot? ☕
✅ What is crypto — talking about Bitcoin is quickly going out of fashion, as prices tumble below $30K. Analysts believe the crypto market is showing credible signs of entering another long cold winter, and millions brought into the pool by the last wave are likely gonna be thoroughly tested for their patience. Heads down apes!
✅ To the moon and back — the 4 member crew of team Blue Origin which included the worlds richest, youngest, and oldest person to ever go into space, completed its widely watched 10-minute space journey aboard a New Shepard rocket. The crew flew to space to touch the Karman line (100 kms in the space) before landing back in the western Texas desert. One for them History books!
You got the public, we got Masa 😎
Swiggy closed a mammoth $1.25 billion Series J round led by Softbank and Prosus Ventures, at a $5.5 billion valuation — days after rival Zomato locked bids for its IPO from the public.
Softbank alone brought $450 million to the party. Fresh funds will go towards expansion of the core delivery biz, while doubling down on non-food verticals. Can’t hold out that IPO for long now…
Big picture — more than $40 billion came chasing the Zomato IPO, which confirms to late stage investors that the line for bag holders downstream is quite long. Rounds will keep coming for a while!
Meanwhile, back in EdTech land 🤝
PE giant Blackstone acquired a majority stake for $250 million, in edtech startup Simplilearn — which basically works with top Indian and global universities to offer early and mid-career professionals upskilling services.
Simplilearn was last valued at ~$80M, so the deal price is quite the leap for Blackstone — which holds sizable exposure to the Indian EdTech game via Byju’s and Aakash.
What COVID, asks Asian Paints! 🖌️
Decor-king Asian Paints blasted a killer quarter — as folks in lockdowns take on home renovations a bit seriously to pass time.
Quick look at the numbers:
Profits more than doubled to ₹574 crores
Revenues of ₹5.6K jumped nearly 96% — for a freaking paints company
Margins were a tad poor, but that’s consistent across the board, as jolted supply chains and vendors going out of business cause supply demand disruptions
Management again advised that rising costs of raw materials was taking a hit on margins, which could hurt profitability going forward a bit — but retail price increases are helping offset some of the damage.
While we’re here, ☝️
Bajaj Finance painted a pretty depressing picture — with profits taking a major hit because COVID affected folks have stopped paying loans, with underperforming assets nearly doubling YoY to 2.96% of the loan book for June 2021. Things are even worse in the company’s auto loan portfolio.
Negative commentary from the biggest financial services company (that ain’t a bank) is going to weigh on the market’s minds for a while here.
Google comes back for more 🤠
YouTube made a rare acquisition in India, spending an estimated $70-$100 million to acquire Simsim — an emerging video commerce platform.
Simsim basically runs a a video first commerce app where users can see micro-influencers pitching products, while on the other hand connecting influencers with small retailers for brand shouts. Content runs on multiple local languages as well.
While it's unclear how YouTube hopes to integrate the platform — we’re thinking merchants and small businesses in India buying ads on Google’s services will find it easy to market services via Simsim too.
Worth a mention — this would be Google’s 3rd or 4th direct investment in vernacular content from their $10B India fund.
Closing out — 2 updates from the IT world 💰
Old world companies are tryna adjust to new realities…
IBM, the old horse limping in the IT and cloud races, posted another boring quarter — a royal 3% growth rate, IBM’s highest in almost 3 years! That’s how bad things are! New CEO Arvind Krishna is busy splitting the company into 2 pieces — a new sexy business that will rival Microsoft, another one that focuses solely on consulting.
Meanwhile, back home Wipro will spend almost $1 billion to accelerate digital transformation, build cloud infra businesses in house, and accelerate M&A in the cloud computing space. Rivals INFY, TCS, Tech Mahindra, and others have been aggressively buying out smaller companies — to accelerate their own transformations.
Key takeaway — global adoption of cloud is a massive wave IT companies could either ride to get to prosperous waters, or crash and lose their treasure. Time’s running out…
Tweet of the day 🐥
What else are we snackin’ 🍿
👨💼 Life goes on - former Intel CEO, Bob Swan, fired for horrible management, has a new job — working as an operating partner for early growth stage-fund of a16z.
🎮 Gaming FTW - Polygon, India’s most promising crypto project, formed Polygon Studios, a dedicated initiative to fund NFT and gaming infra and applications.
Hit that 💚 if you liked today’s issue.
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What a wonderful morning with filter coffee, good and useful contents always.
Those Gif's make content more interesting.
This is exactly like morning brew from the style, to the content, illustrations and even name!
But I like this because its made for india